All I store on my computer is pictures. After haveing one hard drive die and a trojan wiping out all my pics on another computer I figured I best do something different. I invested in 2 portable hard drives and put all my pics on them once a month and leave in the camera intil on the portable hard drives. I store the portable hard drives in a fire save in the basement. I was able to recover all my; pictures on the 2 problem computers with programs available on line. Oh and for some reason the trojan showed up when I was viewing this site. I figure a coincidence there. Just one thing that needs doing. The 1tb portable hard drives were just over 100 bucks at Wally world. Not a whole lot when you think about putting a value on pictures.

I've used CD's in the past and now store stuff all over on my many Zip drives for easy retrieval and portability.. Works great and you don't have to reformat things to hook them up..

I'm assuming you mean flash drives, the only reason I say this is because at one time there was such a thing as a zip drive that was basically a high capacity, for the time, floppy drive. It really became outdated before it's time.

Another great feature about a flash drive is you can move your data from a window machine to a Mac or Linux machine with no hassle.

Also if your hard drive does go south all is not necessarily lost. You can use a live CD or even salve the old HD in a good computer and retrieve your data. We had a thread a while back that tell you how to do this but I can't find it at the moment.

I backup my accounting package daily to a memory stick, this is done automatically by my accounting package .

Once a month The accounting package data file are sent to my email address as an attachment, that is my only real offsite backup. Also once a month I do a backup the files on the hard drive to a dvd. perhaps not the best system but better than no backup at all..

If my house got robbed, destroyed in a storm, etc. then I would have my accounting data in my email server.

At one time I had a tape drive that automatically backed everything up but it was slow and cumbersome to use.

I had used a program that created a mirror of the hard drive (Operating System and all files) but that proved to be useless when needed because the software that created the image had been updated and the old backup couldn't be read with the new program.

I would say I'm happiest with my memory sticks they are affordable and by alternating between 2 of them one can be kept in a lock box.

If you are curious how much is used on your hard drive you can open windows explorer, highlight your c: drive, right click on it and go to properties, that will tell you how much is stored on it. I suspect that most of us only use 40 gigs or less and that includes the operating system !! Everyone's needs are slightly different but some kind of backup is nice when needed.

I just got back from BestBuy where I bought a 3TB backup drive. I have an iMac with a 160 gig had, and 1tb drive where I keep all my videos. My backup drive was just 500 gig. Now I can back up everything.

I can't imagine needing 3 TB's of information ever! You are either a business or a memory hog if you do!! You may be saving data that is really not necessary.. I have a 87% empty of a 700 gig H/D in my machine.. The data I save is about 60-80 gig between pictures, manuals, music, documents & so on.. Operating system & drivers be damned if I lose them because I only really need to save the personal info.. The rest will be replaced with the new system or mainframe..

I had a Tandy 1000? series as my first computer. Definitely didnt wear it out... It was outdated within a couple of years... It only had a 3 1/2" floppy, no hard drive. 8088 chip, if I remember right.
EDIT, I googled and not only found the computer here: (top one) http://www.radioshac...sc-19/h010.html
I also found a couple of hard drive options for you guys... http://www.radioshac...sc-19/h013.html

Man those were LARGE drives, I used to have a 7 1/2 meg for a Commodorw PET. It was the size of a shoebox, and you thought it was going to takeoff when it wound up. NOTE the 7 1/2 was the "big" drive they also made a 5 meg.